IN GOD WE TRUST

Unrealized project for the Parochial Church Berlin

Installation

1998

IN GOD WE TRUST (1999)

The story of this installation, never installed, is swiftly told. In a church setting, the Baroque Parochial Church in Berlin-Mitte, a stock exchange is to be established. Complete with boards showing the highs and lows of the individual stock indexes, an LED-band of light noting the individual trading rates, constantly updated, running along the church wall above our heads, a fully functional place of trade, outfitted with all its typical accessories, is designated for realization at this location normally reserved for devotion and contemplation.
At first, the idea seems simple, its attraction stemming from bringing together the church, commerce and art in an oddly harmonic arrangement. By association, we then arrive at approximately the following pattern of interpretation: The semi-cult activities on the trading floor, together with the iconography of the curves and flashes, the oracles of the analysts and the prayer-like mantras of the wins and losses, are esteemed as a surrogate religion in our day. Modern man serves the Mammon, something his secular reasoning does not like to admit. Provokingly, Victor Kégli introduces this thesis by using our experiences with parallels in the social sphere of God and the Church. It is a process of becoming conscious, which we can walk through, whereby the artist reaches deeply into his bag of strong irritants, something that always bears an inherent touch of blasphemy.

Weiterlesen…

It was a convincing concept, with a somewhat simple message: This might serve to sum up our verdict, as written at a desk in Hamburg at the end of June 2003. Moreover, it was something that, as we must recall, never came to fruition.
The litmus test for the topical importance and relevance of this idea is the sponsors declining to take it on. It was not the church officials, who did not want to be brought into connection with the profane cult of the stock exchange listings in their rooms. It was the sponsors, firms from the financial world, who first hesitated, and then refused their support.
The second aspect attesting to its quality is one we can now see after the fact: Victor Kégli conceived this installation on the eve of the New Economy frenzy, even before Grandma felt pressured to put her savings into stock shares and we were considered foolish if we did not get rich the comfortable way, through speculation. Before everyone, in fact, acted against all reason to dance around the fatted calf, and suddenly, following the stock reports religiously became a mutual regimen everyone shared. Now, even these few months are all but forgotten. It was just too ugly to watch the bubble burst and see the shares plunge to fathomless depths.
After going through this cycle of euphoria, crash, and purge, a concept such as Kégli’s is now, of course, perceived in a different context. Today we look at the world of stocks more soberly and much more realistically. Kégli’s concept is by far no longer charged with such a high degree of relevancy as it was at the time, when he saw the topic coming at us. Perhaps the sponsors would have been more willing to open themselves to this project today, in hindsight, with a quietly critical gesture; but Victor Kégli wants more with his art.